How to Pick Healthy Vegetable Dips

Just because you're eating vegetables doesn't mean you're eating healthily. If you're eating them with a typical ranch dressing, you're adding unnecessary calories and fat to an otherwise nutritious snack. If you eat 2 tbsp. of that ranch dressing with four carrot strips, for example, to those carrots' negligible 12 calories you're adding 120 calories and 12g of fat, 3g of which is saturated. If you like dipping your vegetables, there are healthier alternatives. Read on to learn what some of them are.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

How to Pick Healthy Vegetable Dips

1. Avoid mayonnaise! Break the hold that ranch dressing has had since the mid-to-late-1980s, when casual dining and fast-food restaurants started using it because it was thicker than mayonnaise and had a rich taste without potentially offensive (yet patently healthy) ingredients like the chili sauce found in thousand island dressing. (For a great article on America's love affair with ranch dressing, see Resources below). If you have to have a creamy sauce to dip your vegetables into, use reduced fat mayonnaise or Miracle Whip light instead. Both have half the calories and at least half the fat of regular mayonnaise.

2. Try non-dairy dips that are healthier for you. A lemon tahini vegetable dip (made with the recipe in Resources below) is not only lower in calories and fat, it includes flaxseed oil, a healthy source of omega 3 fatty acids that are typically lacking in American diets. Another great, healthy dip is a balsamic bean dip (made with the recipe in Resources below) that uses olive oil, a good antioxidant that helps omega 3 fatty acids promote the health of your heart.

3. If you don't have time to make a dip, try fresh salsa, natural peanut butter, or guacamole. All three are heart healthy because of the lycopene in tomatoes and the monosaturated fats in both peanut butter and avacados. When you buy them at the store, however, read the ingredients. Buy the refrigerated salsa and guacamole over the bottled kinds next to the chips. Non-refrigerated salsa and guacamole tend to have sugar and other ingredients you don't need. When you buy peanut butter, make sure the package says "natural peanut butter" and has only peanuts and salt as ingredients. Don't buy peanut butter with lard, which is pig fat, or unnecessary sweeteners.

Tips & Warnings

• Dip organic vegetables. They're not grown with any pesticides.

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[mymukki]

on 2/14/2009 Replace mayo and thick creams with silken tofu, add a little lemon juice and some seasonings like a cajun mix and you have a nice dip with no milk products, fat or cholesterol! It's also high in protein -win win!